The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 31

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I would give Nizahl this: they were much quieter than the other kingdoms.

Since they were the youngest kingdom, and the only one not to have an Awal or Awala to honor, Nizahl’s customs diverged sharply from the others.

There were no festivals, no markets, no celebrations. Once a year, Nizahlans gathered to watch the young soldiers advance into the Commander’s army in a special ceremony. They ate game, grains, and bread. They were a strictly hierarchical society, placing a high premium on respect to those above you.

To Nizahlans, Lukubis were depraved, Orbanians animals, and Omalians loud swindlers. They did not see that their kingdom’s sterility was its own danger. Nizahl lived like a predator poised in wait, holding its breath for the right moment to strike.

Jeru accompanied me to Diya’s rooms for supper. Arin had been whisked through the other gates as soon as I left the carriage. “It might interest you to know His Highness the Supreme didn’t invite Vaun into his carriage when he departed from Omal.”

I knocked on Diya’s door. I did not want to think of Dawoud while I stood in his killer’s kingdom. “Good.” I was not foolish enough to believe Supreme Rawain’s suspicion fully laid to rest, but Dawoud’s death had at least cast doubt on the merits of Vaun’s claims.

Our meal was quiet. Diya inspected each bite of food before eating it and stared out the window while she chewed. “I hate birds,” she said. She sliced into the boiled pigeon on her plate. “But I do love to eat them.”

I had grown almost fond of Diya’s belligerent nature. She was a cactus I enjoyed pricking my finger against. I had a notion that Orbanian Fairel would take a great liking to Diya. The young ward had terrible taste in people. “Is that why you keep glaring at the Nizahl crest? Worried one of the ravens will fly down to gobble you up?”

The Orban Champion snapped the pigeon’s wing in two, unamused.

“Laugh as you wish. I know you can feel the dark pulse in this land. Those ravens terrify me.” Diya shuddered, pushing aside her plate. “You should beware symbols of power. They have a tendency to create lives of their own.”

Diya evicted me as soon as we finished eating. I walked back to my room between the second and third gates that bracketed the Champions’ suites. A compromise for not allowing Champions to spend the night in the Supreme’s home; we were still protected within the scope of the Citadel’s grounds. I passed khawaga dressed in galabiyas, the brown-and-green garments falling to their sandaled feet. Nizahl soldiers circled my suite, their starched livery at odds with the neighboring Orbanian garb.

Meanwhile, my perennial inability to sleep in new places was in top form tonight.

“I want to go for a walk around the grounds,” I whined. “Who could possibly attack me in the Citadel? I can’t sleep, Jeru.”

A hassled Jeru yanked at the ends of his curly hair. I’d been nagging him for the better part of an hour. “Would it help if I knocked your skull against the door a few times?”

My neck prickled. The soldiers at Jeru’s back bowed, clearing the way for a tall figure to climb the steps.

“That seems ill-advised,” Arin said, startling Jeru so badly the guard choked on his own saliva.

“Sire, I—” Jeru turned the shade of a ripe pomegranate, but Arin waved the guard’s mortification away.

“Get your cloak,” Arin said to me. “I’m going to take the Nizahl Champion for a walk around the Citadel’s grounds.”

Shock flitted across Jeru’s face before he schooled his features. I supposed Arin didn’t make a habit of personally escorting guests around the premises. “Of course, my lord. I’ll alert the soldiers to open the third gate.”

“I assumed you would barricade yourself in your quarters until tomorrow,” I said, pulling on my cloak. Damn it, where had I tossed my boots?

Arin tracked my frenetic movements around the room with vague amusement. There weren’t many places the boots could be. The only decoration in the room was a painting of Supreme Rawain, placed opposite the bed to ensure nightmares all night long. He was depicted leaning on his

scepter in one of the Citadel’s chambers.

“You’ve heard the rumors,” Arin sighed.

“That you’re a recluse? Everyone has.” Ah, I’d buried them beneath my bags. If I had a fraction of Arin’s instinct for tidiness, I would lead an entirely different life. “You can admit it. I won’t think less of you. You wish you were alone with your maps and a glass of that horrendous lavender drink, don’t you?”

I turned, boots firmly tied, to find Arin in the middle of carefully folding the only set of clothes I’d unpacked: my outfit for the trial. Something in my chest swelled at the sight. The rumple in his brow as he smoothed the sleeves, the way he angled the stack so I couldn’t miss it. Handling my belongings with the thoughtfulness and care I’d originally confused for severity and uncompromising perfectionism.

When he saw me looking, a red tinge brightened the top of his cheeks. I blinked, and it was gone—a trick of the light, maybe.

“No,” Arin said.

“No?”

“No, I don’t wish I was alone with my maps and my talwith. I am where I want to be.”

Before I could open my mouth, he walked out of the suite. I bundled my cloak tighter against the seasonably cold night and hurried to catch up. I waved at Jeru, who grunted and stomped away. “I am going to miss antagonizing your guards.” The third gate yawned open ahead of us, lined with soldiers on either side. They bowed as we passed.

Despite the tension of tomorrow’s trial, Arin’s demeanor was lighter

than usual.

“You’re glad to be home.”

A strand of hair caught on the edge of his smile. “I am.”

This close to the Citadel, I understood what Diya meant about the dark pulse. The halls connecting the main spire to the wings were rectangular and narrow, running high over our heads like open-air tunnels. Even the wind rustling through the grass seemed to whisper warnings I couldn’t make out. Every facet of the Citadel’s grounds was petrifying.

“The Victor’s Ball will be held in this wing.” Arin pointed. “The one behind it is for assemblies with the Supreme’s counselors.”

I struggled to suppress my laugh. Though not readily apparent to most,

Arin was in a good mood. He was speaking easily, and the tight line between his shoulders and neck had fractionally loosened. It was a shame what brought him comfort had the opposite effect on me.

“What about that one?” I pointed to the wing behind the Citadel. The only one without a raven rising from between the two swords.

“The war wing,” Arin answered. Some of the tension returned to his features. “It has not been entered since the siege. When we need to intervene to settle disputes between the kingdoms, we use the third wing.”

I frowned, a question on the tip of my tongue. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to use the war wing for regional disputes if the goal was to efficiently arbitrate? What faster motivator could there be for squabbling kingdoms to settle than the prospect of war?

“Your nimwa system,” I realized. We walked past the Citadel, and I was glad to have the Supreme’s home out of my sight. Identical rows of short, square metal buildings studded the road ahead. The soldiers milling around bowed deeply at the sight of their Commander. “If Nizahl enters a state of active war, mandatory conscription takes effect again. The lower villages will need to send their children to the Citadel.”

Arin looked at me sharply. “How do you know about the nimwa system?”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “Why does it matter how I know? I think it is a wonderful system you’ve created.”

To my unadulterated delight, Arin scowled at the praise. By Sirauk’s cursed depths, the Nizahl Heir was flustered. “It can hardly be called a system.”

I counted on my fingers. “You give every family in the lower villages an allotment of grains, oats, potatoes, and rice. The more members of a family, the higher the allotment. A youth supporting their family is exempted from conscription, and if there are several eligible children in a single household, the age to join is raised to twenty. Which, of course, essentially means everyone in the lower villages is exempt.”

Arin pursed his lips. “Wes.”

I brushed his arm as we walked past the first of the metal buildings.

“You care about your people, Arin. That is not a quality to be embarrassed about.” The statement felt like a confession, meant for whispering in the lonely dark. “You will be an excellent Supreme one day.”

At Arin’s silence, I glanced up to find him staring at me, an indecipherable look in his eyes. My fingers curled in the pockets of my cloak, fighting the asinine urge to reach for him. I wanted to laugh, avert my gaze, anything to defuse the pressure. If I let it settle, if I looked at it too closely, the fragile stage upon which we circled might crumble.

“I am glad to hear you speak my name outside of imminent danger,”

Arin said softly, and the battle was lost.

Idiot! Hanim howled. How many ways can you betray us, Essiya?

It didn’t feel like betrayal. It felt like wandering through the woods for an endless night and finally stumbling into the dawn.

It was the feeling I had at the sight of Mahair after hours of catching frogs by the moonlight. The rush of Hirun around me. Fairel’s giggle and the click of Rory’s cane. Anchors, real and solid, pinning me to earth.

I smiled shakily. “I will make frequent use of it, then.”

After a lifetime of running, he was my homecoming.

Rings formed in the pond to my right as the ground rumbled. Arin grinned, gloved hand closing around mine as he tugged me forward. A slew of soldiers stumbled from one of the metal buildings—military compounds —and sprinted to the south. We were behind them, out of view. The sight of so many bedraggled Nizahl soldiers, devoid of the rigid discipline training would bring, brought a chuckle to my lips. The Supreme wouldn’t be pleased I was witnessing this. The Commander had taken an Omalian villager deep into the Citadel’s ground, to the compounds housing Nizahl’s newest recruits.

“The midnight runs,” I said. “Is anyone holding a mop?”

Arin groaned, releasing my hand. My fingers curled around the absence.

“You are not to be left alone with my guardsmen anymore.”

We resumed our walk. The sight of his soldiers seemed to have invigorated Arin; he spoke more freely than he ever had. He described the trades the soldiers needed to learn, because their duties extended beyond surveillance and fighting. The recruits rotated between the compounds, and only when they were deemed to have performed with exceptional skill in their trainings and trades were they advanced into the army.

“Do you train the new recruits yourself?”

“Rarely. They are too frightened of me.” He sounded unhappy about a fact most would find pleasing. “They will simply obey.”

I lost track of the number of soldiers who bowed to Arin as we walked.

“Is obedience not what a Commander should seek?”

“Obedience should be conscious, not instinctual.”

We turned around, beginning our return to my suites. Another soldier bowed, and I huffed. “Have you considered coloring your hair? You might be able to walk an entire ten feet without being recognized.”

Arin raised a brow. His silver hair was luminescent, a crown in its own right. “Why would I avoid recognition? The only people who do not wish to be known are the ones with something to be ashamed of.”

The Citadel’s silhouette took shape ahead. The heart and soul of Nizahl.

Inside, Rawain would be toasting to his Champion’s success in the trials.

Anticipating the glory I would bring to his kingdom.

“Yes,” I said. “I suppose you are right.”

The ride to the arena passed in tense silence. Sprawled in the center of massive brown fields, the arena loomed ahead like a blight on the land. To prevent a crush of spectators, carriages were stopped half a mile from the arena. My stomach hadn’t ceased its anxious gnawing since leaving the suites an hour ago. “I can walk the rest of the way.”

“It’s raining,” Jeru said.

I deliberately blinked the water from my lashes to communicate my thoughts on his astute observation.

“I will go with her.” Arin stepped smoothly from the carriage.

Wes and Jeru gaped. “But Your Highness, you’ll be on foot while the other royals are entering by carriage.”

“The Heir is due a bit of impropriety,” I said. Jeru looked as though he could not tell whether I had gone mad, or if he had. Resignation loosened Wes’s shoulders, and the older guard even seemed a little amused.

Arin adopted a brisk pace. The soldiers lined the path on either side of us, far away enough to afford us a modicum of privacy. “My soldiers are set up in every corner of the arena. They are stationed at every entry, every exit, every possible location an intruder could exploit. They are dressed in

the colors of other kingdoms, and I have instructed them to carry no weapons that could identify them as Nizahl soldiers.”

“I’m sure you’re ready,” I said.

“I do not want you distracted by security concerns during the trial. Your only goal today is to defeat the Orban Champion, and the rest is mine.”

I lifted a shoulder. “It might be better for the Mufsids or Urabi to get close. Easier for your soldiers to identify the assailants in the crowd if they’re actively attempting to reach me.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Arin whirled, blocking my path.

Incandescent anger lit his lovely features. “Not this again! Sylvia—” He cut himself short and glared at the soldiers. “Turn!” he ordered.

They hastily took several steps away and gave us their backs.

Rain dripped from the bottom of his hair, dampening his coat collar.

“You will walk out of this trial whole and become the Alcalah’s next Victor.

There is no other acceptable result.” The wind carried away the ashes of his anger, revealing a fear that stole my breath away. “Don’t ask me to abide your death at my hands.”

Swallowing past the dryness of my throat, I said, “I spoke poorly. I have every intention of walking out of that trial as an insufferable winner.”

Arin punctuated his words with a glare. “Trust your instincts. Your magic will sense the threat, even if you do not. You’re stronger than them.

You’ll be fine.” It sounded like he was talking to himself as much as me.

I fluttered my hand, infusing my voice with a confidence I didn’t feel.

“Save me a dance at the Victor’s Ball, Your Highness.”

His smile was small and fleeting. “I would have to learn first.”

I gasped, clutching my heart. “Have I stumbled across a fault? In the magnificent Commander, the lofty Nizahl Heir? Impossible. I cannot

believe it.”

Arin sighed. “That’s quite enough.”

The arena curved high on the sides and lower in the center, shaped like a high-sided bowl. Black and violet columns encircled the arena, and a stone statue of Nizahl’s raven and swords towered over the arriving guests.

I motioned to where Diya disappeared beneath a violet awning. “I have to go alone from here.” I swept a dramatic bow to Arin, gratified when exasperation broke across his tense face.

Every step away from him weighed heavier than the last. This trial

posed a double-edged threat. Though Diya seemed to like me and might hesitate to deliver a killing strike, she was the deadliest Champion of the lot. Meanwhile, Soraya lurked somewhere, preparing to kill me before the Mufsids and Urabi could whisk me away.

There was a real chance I would not see him again.

I spun around. Arin cut an imposing figure against the frothing clouds, boots glistening from the rain and coat lifting against the wind. He stood there, watching me leave, even though the storm raged around us. “Tell your guard to turn again,” I called. It barely carried.

Arin raised two fingers and slashed them to the side. The guards gave us their backs a second time. I trotted to him, stripping off my cloak. I held it out. “Would you take care of this for me?”

An agonizing beat wherein I was certain he’d refuse, and I’d have to impale myself on Diya’s sword from the humiliation.

He took the cloak, folding it carefully over his arm. “I’ll treat it like my own.”

“Better,” I said. Without hatred’s spool at the center, the fondness in his eyes was unraveling me. “Wool—”

“—is a difficult material to launder,” Arin finished. “I remember.”

“Good.” Now would be an excellent time to jog away. My feet stayed

rooted.

It was just. He remembered.

A raindrop slid along his jaw. “Is there anything else?”

“I am going to try something.” I squared my shoulders. “Don’t stab me.”

I meant to approach precisely, place my arms at preapproved locations and angle my head just so. We were both wary, and Arin seemed to relish touch about as much as I did.

Instead, I launched myself at the Nizahl Heir. He caught me with a surprised grunt, arms winding around my waist. He was too tall, leaving my feet dangling in the air. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

Arin exhaled, warm against my neck, and held me fast.

“I have a joke about an Heir and an orphan. It’s so ridiculous, even your mighty stoicism will crack,” I whispered. I buried my face in his collar.

“Would you like to hear it?”

His breath ghosted across my skin. “Probably not.”

“That’s all right. It’s funnier in my head.”

I wanted to stay there. I wanted to tell him that I had not easily embraced anyone since Soraya bid me farewell the morning of the Blood Summit. That with him, every aversion was a craving. That even though one day I would kneel before Jasad’s judges in the afterlife to account for it, I would not renounce a single moment of loving the Nizahl Heir.

I pulled away reluctantly. I patted the cloak, avoiding looking at Arin. I had looked my lot at him, and the beating creature in my chest could not withstand another indulgence. “You should start practicing your steps. I’m a wonderful dancer.”

The arena in Nizahl took three thousand men to build. The oval-shaped structure stood two stories tall at its peak, each tier moving farther back, like levels in a staircase to the sky. The bottom of the arena, where the competitors emerged, was roughly a thousand feet. The lowest seats rose above the long walls surrounding the competitiors, shielded from any stray arrows or knives by a thick glass divider. Each kingdom had its own section, marked by a pillar at the very top level, and their unique crests were carved into the pillar’s front. The section to the right belonged solely to the royal families. The Supreme, Sultana Vaida, King Murib and his Queen, and Queen Hanan sat in the front. Behind them were their Heirs, and behind the Heirs were younger siblings, cousins, and their assorted spouses. I glanced past the empty seat next to the Supreme and focused on the task at hand. One more trial.

The announcer’s booming voice shook the arena. Diya and I stayed in the tunnels, waiting for our introductions. He talked of the first Alcalah, of unity and peace, of joining with one’s neighbor in celebrating the best of our kingdoms. Utter nonsense, and eerily identical to the speeches delivered at the Blood Summit.

“This is the sort of honor-of-Awaleen, glory-of-kingdom nonsense Mehti devoured,” Diya murmured. Water dripped in the damp tunnel as the announcer prepared to call us in. “If he had made it to the third trial, he would still never become Victor. What hope would he have of seeing

through fabricated illusions when he cannot see through these?”

The announcer called our names, and we emerged into a cacophony of cheers and exuberant faces. A table laden with weapons took up space on each side of the pit. A black line had been drawn in the sand, demarcating Diya’s side from mine. We walked to our sections.

The announcer pranced around a slab of concrete, keeping away from the shifting sand. As soon as he finished speaking, he’d dart back into one of the doors beneath the arena to hide. “The day we have waited for has finally arrived. We thank the Awaleen for the act of entombing themselves with their wicked brother, Rovial. They loved humanity enough to sacrifice themselves for it, and in return, we present to you the strongest Champions the kingdoms have to offer. Our Awala Baira believed in the potential of our imagination and the depths of the human mind. In celebration of Baira, our Champions will be given an elixir to induce vivid hallucinations. They’ll see themselves fighting lions in Orban’s desert flats, evading hunters in Essam’s wilderness. Can they battle through the elixir’s challenges before the sand below them sinks or the other Champion wakes up?” The presenter raised his arms. “But wait! Do you see the four tunnels around our Champions? From one of them will emerge a beast more fearsome than any illusion. If a Champion does not break themselves from Baira’s illusion in time to fight the beast, the sand will be the least of their concerns. Our Victor will be able to cut through the fabricated threat to the real one!”

The announcer picked up a tray. Emerald liquid sloshed within two glass vials. He took the tray’s long handle and extended the vials to hover between us.

“If our Champions cross the black line you see before you, the nature of the fight will change. Instead of success by simply overpowering their opponent, victory will only be won through a fight to the death.”

I would bet every hair on Marek’s yellow head they engineered these elixirs to make the hallucinations such that keeping to our sides of the pit would be near impossible. If we were outrunning hunters and lions in our head, our feet would naturally carry us forward. Rory had talked about these elixirs, about the light poisons they infused to give the body the impression of death and the roots they mixed in to scramble our senses.

Diya and I raised our vials. Good luck, she mouthed.

The elixir wasn’t nearly as sweet as the color suggested. I wrinkled my

nose, tossing the empty vial into the sand. Diya wiped her mouth with a

grimace.

“Do you feel elevated yet?” Diya asked.

“It’s hard to tell, since I’m already so much taller than you.”

She rolled her eyes, and the action reminded me so strongly of Sefa that I had to look away. Diya hooked an arrow into her bow. “I need to practice aiming. You have a big head, and I would prefer to avoid killing you if I can help it.”

Nausea descended between one insult and the next. It wasn’t unlike the sensations I had experienced at the very start of practicing my magic, when any minute display had me lunging for a bucket.

“Something’s wrong,” I mumbled. My magic hadn’t moved, yet the sickness expanded, surging through me.

Three events came to pass in quick succession.

First, Diya’s eyes rolled to the back of her head. She collapsed in the sand.

Next, a glowing barrier closed around the pit, blocking Diya and me off from the tunnels and the rest of the arena. Screams erupted, but I couldn’t see anything behind the barrier. Which meant they couldn’t see us, either.

My stomach cramped. I crashed into the table, scattering weapons everywhere. The arena spun.

The elixirs. There was magic in the elixirs.

“Soraya,” I ground out.

Soraya knew a direct magical attack would be repelled by the same force distorting her warding spells, so she found a new way to shove her magic past my cuffs: having me ingest it.

Finally, the sickness unhinged its maw and consumed me whole.

My last thought before I hit the sand was a triumphant one. Arin had done it. He had lured them into a trap of his own design. The Mufsids and Urabi would be frenzied, trying to breach the barrier before Soraya

succeeded in killing me.

It would be their final act.

She had taken me into a dream. Maybe a memory.

I stood in Bakir Tower. Unlike the opulence of Usr Jasad, the tower’s limestone and mud brick leached away color and light. In the center of the narrow room, Niphran paced. Not the wispy Niphran in my dreams, but the woman herself. She looked strong, her long shoulders straight, cascading hair tied behind her head. Most surprising of all were her eyes—clear and lucid like they had not been in years. Black kitmer eyes.

“Mama?” I whispered.

She didn’t hear me. I moved closer. Niphran’s circuit around the room didn’t slow. She braced her hands at the window and gasped.

Outside Bakir Tower, the palace bells rang, and a stream of people marched into Jasad’s upper town. I couldn’t appreciate the heartrending tableau of Jasad as it once was. Screams rang out from the palace.

We were under attack.

Niphran’s door opened, and we both whirled around. A teenage Soraya stood on the other side.

“Where’s my daughter? Where’s Dawoud? The palace is under attack!”

Niphran shouted.

From her waistband, Soraya withdrew a wavy dagger. “The palace is finally in the right hands.”

Through the window, I saw people climbing onto the palace’s roof, shouting from the minarets. The palace servants were led out on the ends of spears, cowing to their polished conquerors.

The Mufsids.

Niphran touched her temple, glancing around the barren room for anything she could use to protect herself. “The bedpost! Snap it from the middle of the hourglass curve,” I urged. She did not react. When I tried to reach for it, the wood passed harmlessly through me.

“My head feels clear for the first time in years,” Niphran breathed. “I can think again.”

Cruel amusement flashed across my young attendant’s face. “I would think so. It’s the first day you have been free from your special beverages in six years. I wanted you to see the true Jasad being born without an addled mind. You are the only royal left who can.”

Niphran and I latched on to different parts of Soraya’s declaration.

Special beverages? “Her madness… was just poison?” But how? Soraya

came under the palace’s service two years before the Blood Summit, and Niphran deteriorated years before then. Niyar had waited to appoint Niphran as Qayida until she regained her health, and in the meantime— In the meantime, Hanim had been chosen to lead Jasad’s armies.

My heart staggered to a stop. Niphran’s madness was Hanim’s doing?

“Only royal? Where are the Malik and Malika?” Niphran started forward, halting when Soraya raised the dagger. “Where is my daughter?”

The boredom on Soraya’s face wavered, just for an instant. Niphran went white. “No, no, don’t say—”

“She’s not dead yet,” Soraya snapped. “He plans to attack on the last day of the Summit, after the messenger carries news of your death.”

He. She could only mean Rawain. I’d known the true culprit of the Blood Summit all along, but the confirmation still cut the knees out from under me. My memories were true. I wasn’t crazy. But how had he done it?

I was watching my worst suspicions unfold into reality. The Mufsids had been working against Usr Jasad before the siege. It was they who’d slaughtered everyone in the palace, days before Nizahl even reached the kingdom. But why? The Mufsids belonged to wealthy wilayahs, profiting from Jasad’s gains long before the other wilayahs did. They had the least reason to hate the Usr.

Niphran covered her heart with both hands. “Essiya loves you. She had so few people left to love, and she chose you.”

“Shut up!” It echoed in the lonely caverns of Bakir Tower. “If I could have—” Soraya turned away, and to my utter disbelief, tears glistened in her eyes. “I want the rotten lot of you to fester under the earth. If I could have spared Essiya, do you think I wouldn’t have? No one can inherit Jasad! There can be no blood claim to the throne.”

Niphran wasn’t deterred. For someone resurfacing from years of lethargy, my mother was certainly thinking fast. “Then hide her. Give her a new name. Send her to live with Emre’s family in Omal. She is only a child, Soraya.”

“I have worked too long and too hard to rescue Jasad from the plague of royals. Essiya’s death is on the Jasad crown’s hands, not mine.” Soraya sighed. “She will join you soon.”

“Do your coconspirators know you intend to kill her?” Niphran pointed out the window, where flames had begun to burn in the palace gardens. I

watched fire leap onto the same fig and date tree illustrated on the wall of the training center and wanted to weep. “I can’t imagine they’d go along with your scheme if they did. This is all for her magic, isn’t it? They want it more than anything. They want it enough to light a match over our entire kingdom.”

Uncertainty passed over Soraya. “They will come to understand why Essiya had to die. They’ll see the potential of her magic is not worth the cost it will exact.”

“I won’t let you take her.” Gold and silver flickered weakly in Niphran’s eyes, her magic sluggish after years of disuse.

The dagger plunged into Niphran’s chest. My mother grabbed Soraya’s shoulder, and the attendant’s ruthless stare was the last thing she saw before her eyes fluttered shut. The dagger slid free, sending Niphran crumpling to the floor.

Her hair spilled around her in a pool of black. Blood wept from her wound as Soraya’s footsteps faded, leaving only Bakir Tower’s unforgiving silence.

The sinister plot unraveled as my mother breathed her last. Hanim poisoned the Jasad Heir for years. Kept her too disoriented and unstable to assume her rightful role as Jasad’s Qayida. When Hanim found herself banished, Soraya was already positioned in the palace to take over Hanim’s duties and keep the Heir docile.

I reached for Niphran’s cheek. Most of my short time with my mother was spent resenting her shortcomings. What kind of parents were Niyar and Palia to witness their mighty daughter’s downfall and not question its source?

An enormous crash shook the ground. When I glanced up, I stood beside Soraya and a swarm of people in one of the palace’s balconies. The fortress ran as far as the eye could see, winding around our kingdom. Colored in the amber of tree resin, the ethereal barrier soared higher than the Citadel itself.

Gold and silver streaked across the surface like the shimmering trail of a shooting star.

“It’ll hold,” Soraya said tersely. The people around her—Mufsids— stared at the fortress as the earth quaked with another crash. “We used all our magic to cast the enchantment.”

“What if we said it wrong?” the woman beside her asked. The reason

why fully grown adults were deferring to a girl of sixteen was made clear when Soraya replied in a cutting tone, “I read the enchantment exactly as Hanim wrote it.”

A man shoved to the front, rounding on Soraya. A deep gouge split his cheek from nose to ear. “Did you consider maybe she wanted the enchantment to fail? She asked us to attack before she was banished, and we refused her. What if this is her revenge?”

“She would never let Jasad fall to Supreme Rawain!”

“Why not?” he bellowed. Another reverberating thud shook the air, and a crack splintered over the fortress’s facade. “We betrayed her. With Jasad under his control, she stands to regain her power. Hanim has no loyalties, no principles. She wants the throne, and she thinks the Supreme means to rule Jasad. By the time she realizes his true intentions, the entire kingdom will be destroyed!”

“How could she think Supreme Rawain would ever let her take Jasad’s throne?” Soraya balked. With a deafening smash, the multiplying cracks in the fortress fractured. The Mufsids threw themselves to the ground as a million gold and silver rays engulfed them. Like a rupture of the sun, the light swathed Jasad in warmth, the result of centuries of magic and enchantments fed to the unassailable fortress.

The thunder of thousands of hooves rocked Jasad as horses appeared through the broken fortress. Black-and-violet uniforms stretched as far as the eye could see. On the crests draped over their horses, a raven rose between two clashing swords. The crest fluttered as the riders pounded over the scorched ground where the fortress had stood. The flame from their torches dotted the horizon like a starlit night.

Nizahl descended on Jasad in a swarm of darkness.

The Mufsids were already fleeing, but Soraya remained beside me. We watched the soldiers gallop into the towns. We listened as the screams began.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” said Soraya. When she turned, she was older. The Soraya from the Banquet.

Jasad melted around us. White walls replacing its verdant fields.

Around us, flickers of Jasad seeped onto the walls. Hooves pounding down the street. Flames licking up the side of a lower village’s school.

“Hanim deceived me. She ruined us,” Soraya said. “I wanted to show

you I would never have sent you to the Blood Summit if I suspected the fortress would fall.”

“Do not patronize me. You have lied since the moment I met you.”

“Not about this! I was barely more than a child myself when Hanim recruited me to the palace. You clung to me, and I held you right back. I had no choice, Essiya. My love for you could not outweigh what needed to be done.”

“There is always a choice,” I snarled. “What I don’t understand is why. I wouldn’t have challenged your claim to power if you had united our people and secured their trust and safety. I was content in Mahair, with my life in the village. My magic is trapped! It can’t harm anyone.”

Bitterness laced Soraya’s laugh. “I have a long memory, Mawlati. Many have forgiven your grandparents’ sins, caught in the nostalgia of a lost age.

But I remember. You would have grown into the image of every royal who had come before you.”

The room vanished. We were in the eastern province of Jasad, in a tiny, ramshackle village. Thatch and moldering wood held up the tiny hovels, and rank-smelling liquid muddied the potholed dirt road. Flies buzzed around a dead munban. Children wearing clothes three sizes too small threw rocks into the pools of filthy water.

Three Jasadi soldiers marched past in gold-and-silver uniforms, scattering the swarming flies. The children receded, eyes widening in their haggard faces. Two of the soldiers carried a stretched canvas similar to the one the Alcalah’s medics used. A large, shrouded figure lay still on top.

The Jasadi soldier knocked on one of the doors. A scowling woman stuck her head out. She batted away the three small girls peeking around her skirts. The soldier held out a thick letter, sealed with a soaring kitmer.

Jasad’s royal crest.

Her gaze flew to the body.

Soraya stood near the children while the woman dropped to her knees, tearing at the shroud. The soldiers tried to yank her back. “I remember my father’s mangled, charred carcass. The smell of it.”

One of the girls who’d been throwing rocks ran over. She was no older than ten or eleven, but the weeping little girls tugged on her sleeve, mouthing a name. Soraya.

The girl picked up the letter her mother had dropped. The adult Soraya

moved to read over her shoulder. “ ‘Malika Palia and Malik Niyar offer their sincerest regrets for the tragic accident.’ Almost every house in our village had received one of those letters. They fed us to their greed and pretended to care when it chewed.”

“The magic mining,” I realized. My hand flew to my mouth. The memory I’d uncovered in Omal…“The other rulers were accusing my grandparents during the Blood Summit. But I thought… I thought magic mining was impossible.”

“It is impossible to mine magic from the land.” Soraya’s mother threw off the shroud covering her husband, and my stomach heaved. The corpse of Soraya’s father did not resemble any creature that had once walked the earth. His bones were crushed into fragments and rearranged. The sharp edges of his bones were clear and glassy. His skeleton—because he had no mass or flesh—was covered in soot and ichor.

“But not people. No one had ever thought to mine magic from blood until your grandparents. When they realized Jasad’s magic was weakening, and our children were born with less power each generation, the Malik and Malika drained the magic from the people in the poorest wilayahs, one by one. Taking our magic for Usr Jasad or feeding it back to their favorite wilayahs. Do you have any idea what it feels like to have the very source of your magic stripped from your body? My father believed in the importance of respecting the throne, and they consumed him.”

Your magic is powerful, Essiya. Gedo Niyar and Teta Palia might try to take some of it.

If my grandparents were cruel enough to mine magic from their own people, how terrified of my magic must they have been to put it behind cuffs?

“Then why would you work with the Mufsids? They’re as complicit as my grandparents!”

“The Mufsids have resources, connections. They saw to it that Hanim was appointed as Qayida. They placed me as your attendant. And when it came time to wipe the throne of Jasad free of your family’s scum, they were primed to strike. The only point of disagreement was you. Their goals were entirely centered on your magic, but once the fortress fell and you were declared dead at the Blood Summit, I had no problem cementing my control.”

“Why my magic?” I demanded, at a complete loss. I knew it was powerful, but how could it merit all this chaos? “What do they want to do with it?” They couldn’t mean to simply mine my magic like they’d mined it from Soraya’s father. They could have accomplished that at any point before the siege, especially if they had unfettered access to me through Soraya.

Suddenly, Soraya stumbled, agony ricocheting across her face. “He found me,” she spat. “Damn it to the tombs, how?”

The walls shifted again, and I didn’t waste the chance. I hurled myself at Soraya, taking us both to the ground. In an instant, she disappeared from beneath me, and I landed in a massive bedroom.

A different Soraya sat in front of an oval mirror. Without the dirt caked into her hair and the rage lining her features, this younger version of my attendant was easier to recognize. She ran a brush through the pin-straight hair falling to her shoulders. My Soraya, sweating with the effort of remaining upright, grunted, “I hated ruining my curls. But I already had too much marking me as a Jasadi.”

I walked past the young version, coming to a halt at the foot of a wide bed. I caged my breath. Beneath the covers, a teenage Arin slept. I watched him breathe, shaken by the vulnerability in his youthful features.

“He likes to think I’m the one who made him so cold,” Soraya said, climbing beside him. Her fingers passed through his cheek, and I wanted to break them one by one. “He was already such a challenge. Paranoid, distrustful. Constantly looking for a reason to doubt. He didn’t trust kind gestures, and he interacted with life at arm’s length.”

She grinned at me with a spark of the mischief that earned my devotion in the first place. “If anybody was going to bring a mountain to its knees, it would be you, amari. Arin of Nizahl falls in love with the Jasad Heir. Ha!

And he thought my deceit was bad. No wonder he has shuttered his heart so tightly: the damned thing keeps leading him astray.”

“I did not deceive him,” I said. “When we met, I was not the Jasad Heir.

I was an Omalian villager, barely even a Jasadi. I didn’t intend to become— to start—”

The other Soraya finished brushing her hair. She put the brush on the vanity.

“To start caring?” Soraya finished. “Yes, Hanim does an excellent job of

excising that particular failing. It doesn’t matter. Arin doesn’t consider betrayal the way we do. To him, it is the fury of being outmaneuvered. Of miscalculating.” The other Soraya straddled Arin over the covers, gazing down at his peaceful face. His unscarred face.

Meanwhile, Soraya’s magic was weakening. The room’s colors faded in and out, and her skin had a sallow cast.

On the bed, a blade materialized in the other Soraya’s grip. With a shaky breath, she slashed down, toward Arin’s throat. The Nizahl Heir’s eyes flew open. He twisted, changing the dagger’s trajectory. Blood curved up his jaw, forming the line of the Commander’s infamous scar.

Arin flung Soraya into the wall. She collapsed into a heap on the floor.

Arin staggered to the door as a young Wes burst in with a flurry of guards, alerted by the thud. Wes moved just in time to catch Arin as he dropped to the ground.

Among them was Vaun. He held a thick cloth to Arin’s profusely bleeding gash, eyes swinging to the door as a writhing Soraya was dragged out. The Supreme ran in, and just as the room warped, I could have sworn the colors in his scepter began to swirl.

We slammed into the white room. Soraya doubled over. “I suppose this is goodbye. I need to preserve enough magic to fight him off.” Her eyes glimmered a faint gold and silver. “I love you, amari. I hope you remember that when death joins us again someday.”

I lunged, and this time, I succeeded in tackling her to the ground. She shoved me off, and I chuckled as the gold and silver in her eyes whirled faster. Trying to whisk herself away, was she?

“You can’t leave, Soraya. My magic may not work out there, but we are in its domain now,” I said. Her grand scheme to thwart my cuff’s protections by pouring her magic into the trial’s elixirs had forgotten that putting magic into my body wasn’t the problem. I stood up, baring my teeth in a deranged smile. “My cuffs, you see, have this vexing habit of trapping magic inside me.”

Soraya’s doe-eyed regret vanished. The walls around us crumpled like a fragile autumn leaf, scattering us in a million directions.

Depositing us on the frozen surface of a lake.

Shadow figures swayed on the distant shore. Watching me. Waiting. I’d been here before.

“Not if you die before my magic does.” She flickered in and out, the struggle of holding me to the dream and battling Arin’s effects apparent.

I skimmed the top of my head, probing along the edges of my crown.

My silver gown rippled onto the lake. The embroidery on my skirt came alive, and the caged kitmer paced in the folds of fabric, its catlike body stretching in agitation.

Soraya had sent me into my most recurrent nightmare.

“I wanted more time for you,” Niphran said. Regal and melancholy, the heart of Jasad made flesh. “More peace. More love. A chance to thrive in the world before it collapsed around you.

“Then again,” she continued, donning an expression of bemused awe, “I suppose you have, haven’t you? Oh, if my mother and father could see us now. The daughter in love with the shy, bookish Omal Heir, and the granddaughter in love with the Nizahl Commander. Which do you think is worse?” Her trilling laughter didn’t reach her eyes. Fire licked at her dress, orange tendrils climbing up her immobilized form.

I turned in a circle. There had to be a way out. Every spell had seams, corners you could slip your fingers beneath and yank. Better yet, where was Soraya? I’d use her head to break the ice. “I am not in love with the Nizahl Heir.”

“Don’t lie to me, Essiya,” Niphran said, stern. The flames danced around her waist.

“Can we focus?” On the shore, the shadow figures swayed faster.

Straining to hear our ludicrous conversation? “The fire—”

Gold and silver churned in her eyes. “He’s very handsome. Before I met your father, I was infatuated with boys like him. All the ice and sharp edges.

The Nizahl Heir, though! I don’t think I could have ever been so audacious, even in my youth. I am impressed.”

The kitmer clawed, unable to escape its silk prison.

The flames gleefully consumed my mother. The moment she disappeared from view, she shrieked. Shrill, ear-piercing shrieks. “Help me!”

I beat my fists against the ice. Ripped my crown from my hair and scraped it against the thick layer of frozen lake. Why wouldn’t the ice break?

Smoke stung my eyes. I scrubbed them, Niphran’s harrowing screams

intensifying. It happened as it had in a hundred dreams. I glanced down to see smooth, bare skin where my cuffs had been.

I knew how it would go. The fire would burst. Eat the shadow people and then feast on me. I couldn’t watch it happen again. If my freed magic wasn’t the solution, what was?

Hanim’s old taunt. You could possess all the magic in the world, and you

would still give Jasad your back.

“Essiya!”

I had already watched my mother die once today. I threw myself into the fire and collided with Niphran, wrapping my arms around her. The shadow creatures rushed forward. Instead of consuming us, the fire shot up, crawling over the night sky. Bringing dawn to the shadows. Not shadows— Dawoud, Niyar, Palia. Countless Jasadis, given faces and names at last.

Niphran’s eyes shone. “You saved me.”

My arms closed around empty air as my mother vanished, taking the lake and the Jasadis with her. It was just Soraya and me, standing in my old palace bedroom.

Soraya fell, clutching her stomach as my magic rippled around us. I sat on the ground beside her, and sadness swelled in my chest. The best memories of my childhood were in this room with her and Dawoud. “I’m sorry Hanim betrayed you, Soraya. She trained us to be pawns in her game.” I touched the crown of Soraya’s bent head. Grief. Rage. Fear. I had let them lead me, but Soraya had let herself become them. “If I had never gone to Mahair, I would have become as empty and lost as you. Treating love like a disease to be purged.”

I took her face in my hands. Her gaze was pained and panic-stricken.

“Goodbye, Soraya,” I whispered.

My magic surged around the attendant, gales of gold and silver whirling around her faster and faster. She threw her head back as my magic flowed into her, lighting under her skin.

Soraya screamed, and I threw my arm over my face as magic painted the bedroom white.

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